The Greatest Glory
by FreakFreak
Summary: Each time Merope was sure she'd found love, she was proven wrong – except once. Written for the Fantastic Beasts Challenge.


**Summary: **Each time Merope was sure she'd found love, she was proven wrong – except once. _Written for the Fantastic Beasts Challenge. _

_Ashwinder_: Ashwinder eggs are used in Love Potions, so **write about someone who uses a love potion to make someone fall in love.**

* * *

**The Greatest Glory  
**

* * *

I.

There he is! The clopping of a horse's hooves is faint, but it is enough to punch the air from her lungs and make her cold all over. She darts out onto the side of the path from behind the hedge to stand in what she hopes to be her most dignified pose – hands neatly folded in front of her, her new (well, recycled from a dress she's outgrown) bonnet perched delicately on her head, and her face modestly downturned so she appears to be gazing coyly at a bunch of flowers.

She stands there, trembling, sweating inside the coarse woollen dress. The dress is hot, heavy, and second-hand, but it is the finest dress Merope owns. Her mother was married in it; she was plumper than Merope, and taller, so the dress hangs off her own narrow frame and trails behind her, frayed at the hem. The dress has faded from its original rich royal blue to a flat, dead-looking navy; Merope smooths it down now, her fingers trembling. She pinches her cheeks, hard, to give them a little colour against the pale sallowness of her face.

The horse's hoofbeats grow louder, and Merope strains to hear his voice – dreading it and praying for it, for if he is talking he will have someone with him, and it could be that awful Cecilia.

At the foot of the path, a great pale stallion trots into view. The horse snorts and tosses its head; astride it, wearing cream riding trousers and an olive green sports jacket, is Tom Riddle. His grey eyes widen at seeing her standing by the side of the road, but he obligingly slows the stallion to a walk. He nods at her, and the horse picks up speed as they approach, ready to pass her by.

Her heart is in her throat, and she feels hot and cold all over. She notices that a single drop of sweat curls down his forehead, like a question mark without a dot. "H-Hullo," she croaks. Tom evidently doesn't hear her; she coughs and tries again. "Hello!" she calls out. Her voice sounds high and thin and grating, and she cringes.

Tom pauses and slows the horse down. "Yes?" he says, turning his head to look right at her; Merope's legs are wobbling. She notices that his lips have a perfect cupid's bow, and his eyes are the colour of winter storm clouds.

"Ex-Excuse me, sir," she begins tremulously, "I couldn't help but notice that – well, it's an awfully hot day and – I was wondering if, if you – I'm collecting water from the well, you see, for, for my family – would you care for a glass?"

He looks down at her, his expression inscrutable, and Merope dazedly thinks, not for the first time and certainly not for the last how utterly _beautiful_ the man is. But the moment passes, and he wipes the comma of perspiration from his brow and nods. "Yes, thank you," he says, and swings down from his horse.

* * *

II.

"Now you have to hide again," Morfin says imperiously, flicking his muddy brown hair. At the age of nine, he already has his father's boastful pride and mercurial temper. "And I mustn't find you. If I do…" he glowers at her, and Merope rubs her arm and the bruises that are there. Fresh bruises bloom on her body like the flowers in the forest, deep black and mottled purple and scented with dread and hostility.

"But, Morfin," she says timidly, "I don't like this game. Can't we play something else?"

Morfin scowls darkly, and she fears he might throw a tantrum and bring their father – if the man could even stand at this time of the day. He was normally out like a light by mid-afternoon at the very latest, and now the sun brushes the top of the tree canopy. Smoke spirals up in lazy curls from Little Hangleton's chimneys; the Manor is framed in a halo of pink and scarlet, regally gazing down upon the village with dozens of tall windows that glint like eyes, reflecting the sunset.

Morfin's heavy hands, which are curling into fists by his sides, convince her. "I'll count to ten," Morfin announces gleefully. The clearing is large; Merope will barely make it out before he finishes counting.

But she makes a valiant effort anyway. He reaches six as she reaches the first few trees and ten as she shimmies up the branches. He leaps after her, bellowing, "Cheater! Cheater! It's against the rules to climb the trees!" Merope is an able climber, but her skirt is not – it catches on a branch and tears, catching her feet in the cloth and causing her feet to slip from the branches. Her hand scrabble on thin air and she tumbles down, past Morfin –

And lands gently on the ground, feet first, her dress neat and tidy and looking like it had never even seen the wrong side of a mending needle.

Morfin howls, "_Cheat! Cheat! I'll thump you for that one, Merope!"_ but she is scrambling away.

He catches her, of course – grabbing her by the hair and pulling her to the ground, where he attacks her with fists and feet and teeth, pinning her down and attacking her whole-heartedly. "_I'll get you, cheater! I'll teach you to run away from me!" _he hisses viciously.

"_Ow! Ow! Stop it, Morfin! Stop hitting me!" _she cries, shielding her head. Morfin knocks away her matchstick arms and punches her square in the jaw; she can taste blood.

"_Father says you killed Mother!"_ he howls, tearing at her hair, scratching at her face, kicking her as hard as he can. _"You killed her, you killed her, you killed her!"_

"_No – Morfin – stop it – I didn't! I didn't! Stop hurting me!"_

But Morfin will not listen. Merope wakes up shivering, blinking at the night sky, strewn with stars like jewels on crushed velvet.

* * *

III.

They are married in Great Hangleton by a priest drunk on communion wine. Tom's witness is a foreign traveller, from France – Merope finds his accent disconcerting and it makes her skin crawl. Her witness is an old woman who mutters and smells of urine. The chapel is small and pokey, and the priest repeats himself and burps – but to Merope, nothing matters except the sunlight streaming through the stained glass behind them, illuminating the scene of the Virgin Mary, Baby Jesus, and Joseph, their faces filled with gentle piety; and the look of warmth and love in Tom's beautiful grey eyes as he gazes upon her as if he has been blind all of his life, and she is the light.

In the church record, the old woman marks her name with the shaky _X_ of an illiterate, beside the Frenchman's two-initialled signature. Tom easily scrawls out his name in elegant handwriting, with a flourish and a tight curl at the foot of the R in Riddle; Merope's careful, uncertain _Merope Riddle_ is in block capitals.

Later, at the inn where Tom has paid generously for the largest room, Merope sits on the bed uneasily. Her brother has gleefully told her all about the Muggle whores he takes at the village, when he has the coin to pay for them, and she has seen animals in the forest copulate in spring. From her brother's sordid retellings, she imagines it will be painful for her but enjoyable for her new husband; from the animals, she hopes it will be quick.

Tom holds her gently in his arms, and when he kisses her she feels dizzy. He touches her reverently, as though she is a holy relic and he the pilgrim; her skin burns wherever he trails his fingertips. For a moment, she remembers the rainbow of coloured light as it cast down onto the chapel's marbled floors, and then all is swept away except for Tom and his swirling grey eyes that close in sweetly agonised pleasure. Her centre, her core, her world. Her Tom. She is complete.

* * *

IV.

She sways as she stands, her knuckles scratched from scrabbling through the undergrowth to try to find something – _anything_ – to eat, berries or roots or even insects. Her boots are too small for her, and they pinch her toes; but it is November, and frost has already taken the forest, making beautiful patterns in the grass and hedges. If she took off her boots now, she'd lose another toe to the cold.

She sniffles, and rubs her nose. A needle's pinprick of cold touches the back of her neck, and then another on her cheek. She looks up to the iron-grey sky and moans in despair when snowflakes begin to dance down from the heavens.

"You! Girl! Oiy!"

Merope whirls. A boy is running towards her, and memories of having stones thrown at her by the village children flood her mind's eye – she bolts into the forest.

"Oh – I say! Stop!" demands the boy, rushing after her. He sounds out of breath, but he is taller than Merope and is wrapped up warm against the snow. He catches her as she tries to duck into a bramble bush, wrapping his hand around her upper arm with cruel ease.

"Who are you? What are you doing on our land?" he demands haughtily, shaking her.

"I – I'm – I–" Merope stammers, teeth clacking in her head. The boy meets her eyes, and all of a sudden Merope can't breathe as she stares.

The boy is a handspan taller than her, with dark curls that drip lushly to the top of his moss-green scarf, wrapped several times around a slender neck. He wears a slate grey woollen coat and tall riding boots; the coat perfectly matches his eyes, which echo the stormy grey clouds above them. Irritation and annoyance swirl in the depth of those eyes like the snow that swirls around them, cold and unforgiving. She cannot breathe – he looks like a prince, she thinks dazedly.

The boy's assessment of her is nowhere near as kind. He lets go of her arm and shoves her away from him, holding his hand at a distance from him as if touching her has infected him with her shabby-clothed poverty and lazy-eyed ugliness. "Ugh!" he cries. "You're the tramp's daughter, aren't you?"

Merope thinks of her father's drunken rants – _'We are Gaunts, girl! Salazar himself swore, we were destined to sit on a throne made of Muggle bones. We're greater than that foul scum, and just you wait, girl, one day they will throw themselves at our feet and beg for mercy!'_ – but she can only nod, her eyes wide, rendered mute from the boy's impossible handsomeness.

The boy scoffs again. "Go on!" he shouts. "Get out! Don't let me ever catch you near Riddle lands again! Or I'll go hunting with my father and shoot you myself! Get out!"

With a whimper, Merope turns tail as fast as she can into the forest. When she stumbles into the clearing where the Gaunt shack stands like a lopsided drunkard, she realises she has dropped her basket.

* * *

V.

Tom promises his new bride anything that she could possibly want, and showers her with necklaces, with mink fur coats, with boxes full of make-up, with high shoes, with earrings, with _everything_. They take a coach to London, where no-one will look twice at a handsome young man and his ugly wife, despite them being so utterly mismatched. Tom, who read law at Oxford, signs on with a shabby-looking law firm. Merope stays home and keeps the house as clean as she can make it. Merope finally gets her little pocket of domestic bliss, as she dreamt for it so many times during her childhood.

Tom laughs at his dear little wife, who cannot cook well nor clean. He loves her despite that, he claims, and picks her up and spins her around, kissing her deeply. She laughs and hugs him close, relishing his sweet warm scent and the strong protective arms that wrap around her to keep her safe.

She still keeps her great-great-grandmother's wand in her bedside table. She takes it out late at night, when Tom is sound asleep, and lies in bed with it curled inside her fist beneath the pillow. She has never been proficient with magic, much to her father's fury, but the wand will no longer even emit sparks for her.

But her father is in Azkaban, and so is her brother; she will never see them again, she hopes devoutly, and so she takes the wand to Knockturn Alley and sells it for two galleons.

Every morning, in his cup of tea, Merope measures out seven precise drops of Amortentia for Tom to drink.

* * *

VI.

Her father is slumped on the wooden chair beside the rickety table, sprawled across the table. Bottles of drink – Merope catches the familiar sour smell of the nasty home-brewed spirits her father bottles every winter – litter the floor around him. They are all empty. The glass reflects her haggard sunken eyes by the light of the single candlestick on the table.

It is late, and Merope wants to go to sleep. The Gaunt shack has three rooms: the bedroom where her father sleeps alone, the smaller bedroom where Morfin has made his nest, and the main room, with table, chairs, and stove. There is also, in a corner on the floor, a rickety trundle bed with a mattress stuffed with dried grass she collects at the change of every season. But Merope cannot sleep while her father snores like a herd of hippogryffs at the table.

"Father," she whispers. He does not stir. "Father," she repeats, a little louder. "Father," she tries again, this time prodding him gently. She pauses, and shakes his shoulder. "Father! Wake up!"

He gives a guttural grunt and starts awake, rubbing his gimlet eyes awake. "What?" he says churlishly.

"Go to bed, Father. You'll be more comfortable there." Merope hopes he is too drunk to question her. No such luck. His squinting little eyes narrow at her and in with a sudden jolt, he is on his feet and snarling like a rabid wolf.

"_Don't_ _you tell me how to live, you snotty little cow!"_ he hisses, raising his hand. Merope braces herself for the backhand, but it never comes. Marvolo stares down at her, a dark, unreadable expression in his eyes. Sadness? Pity, perhaps? Could it even be shame?

"_I'm sorry, Father,"_ Merope tries, hoping the look in his eyes means his mercurial mood has gotten marginally better, "_I just meant that you looked tired, and I thought – perhaps – you'd sleep better in your bed?"_

This is apparently not the right thing to say. Her father roars wordlessly and collapses in the chair, sobbing. Merope stands frozen – in her entire life, she has never seen her father cry, but here he sits, bawling.

"_She is gone, gone, gone_," he howled despondently, _"I'm alone. So alone. Gone, gone, gone. And she'll never come back."_

"_Who, Father?"_ Merope tries gently, _"Who's gone? Is it Mother?"_

"_I loved her, you know_," her father sobs, his great shoulders shaking. _"I loved her so much. We were perfect. She was perfect. She made me remember what it really means to be a Gaunt, to be proud, to be true to your ancestors. I loved her…"_

Merope hesitantly touched her father's shoulder. When no adverse effects occurred, she did it again, and was soon gently patting her father's shoulder in comfort. It was the first gentle contact between them she could remember. _"There, there, Father_," she said, because she was not sure what else she should say. _"I remember her too, you know. A little bit. She had blue eyes, didn't she? And brown hair, like mine and Morfin's. And she loved me very much. I remember that."_

Her father's shoulders stop shaking abruptly and for a moment, the entire world is still. The silence is deafening; Merope feels is compressing her skull and boring into her ears. Even the wind has stopped moaning outside as the world holds its breath.

Then he snaps. Her father leaps from his chair and he has his hands around her skinny neck and his face right up to hers. _"YOU KILLED HER!_" he howls. _"YOU KILLED HER! YOU RUINED HER! YOU TOOK HER AWAY FROM ME! I'LL KILL YOU, YOU BITCH! I'LL KILL YOU!" _

His hands snap around her throat like a trap for a rabbit. _"No – Father – please–" _Merope scrabbles at his hands, clawing desperately, but she is like a mouse struggling against a python's deadly grip. His hands are a vice of steel. Her vision tunnels; all she can see is the flame dancing on the wick of the candle on the table, and _"You killed her – you killed her – I'll kill you–"_ echoes through her mind.

* * *

VII.

Merope bolts from bed while the sun is still down, to be violently sick in the kitchen sink. While modern enough, their little rented home in London doesn't yet have an indoor privy; as she wipes her mouth with the back of her hand, she looks regretfully at the plates she set out to dry last night that are now flecked with her vomit.

Tom, though, doesn't care a whit about the plates. "Does this mean," he breathes at the breakfast table, eyes wide, "does this mean you could be having a baby, my love?"

Merope pauses midway through making Tom his cup of tea, nearly dropping the cup. She hadn't thought about it – Tom had been feeling poorly last week, and she had thought the bug was just passing through her. "It – it might," she says, hesitantly.

That's all the confirmation Tom needs, because he stands abruptly from the table and crosses the kitchen in two strides, and pins her to the counter with a long, ardent kiss that leaves her lips searing and her eyelashes trembling.

She doesn't notice until after he's left that he's left the cup of tea on the table, entirely untouched.

Perhaps it's foolish of her, but Merope wonders if she could ease off the dose of Amortentia. Surely, if she reduced the dose bit by bit, he would still love her? It'd been nearly seven months since he'd stood with her at the altar of a little run-down chapel on the outskirts of Greater Hangleton, and six since he'd received a letter denouncing him from the Riddle family. He would doubt himself, of course – but he would come back to her. Where would he go, if not to her?

Merope considers the little flask of Amortentia on the countertop. Seven months is a long time, she thinks to herself. After that amount of time, the feelings would have grown naturally, wouldn't they? The body would become used to feeling "in love" – and one just didn't simply "fall out of love", did they? And besides, Tom was good, and honourable; he would stay with her, and the baby. He would never shame himself by leaving her and their child.

Merope smiles to herself and hesitantly strokes her belly.

* * *

VIII.

She obsesses over the boy from the Riddle orchard. After subtly questioning Morfin, she finds that his name is _Tom Riddle_, and he is the only son of Lord and Lady Riddle. That is all the information she gets out of Morfin; she not question him further for fear that he'll get suspicious.

She tries various plots and tricks to attract his attention; but it appears that despite that encounter on his family's land, he has all but forgotten her. When spring comes, he does not come riding down the path to the village as she has seen him before. In summer, she sees him only once, and distantly – an elegant trap and pony, the pony with braided mane and the trap carved with the Riddle coat of arms, make their way down the path to Greater Hangleton. In the back of the trap sits Tom Riddle, bored and wearing a stiffly starched school uniform with a rolled umbrella next to him in the seat.

She does not see him after that for a long time, but she refuses to let that time go to waste.

Seasons pass. Marvolo Gaunt contracts an illness of the lungs, where he lies in his bed coughing and hacking and choking on his own phlegm. Merope begs him to see the doctor in Little Hangleton, but he flies into a terrible rage for her "Muggle-loving ways" and has Morfin beat her until she can hardly walk. Her father recovers, but he can no longer stand for long periods of time, or go trapping in the Riddles' woods for game and pheasant as he once used to.

Merope goes hungry. In the autumn and the summer, she searches for as many berries and fruits as she can find and tries her hand at storing them in discarded glass jars for the winter; the end result is a thick, heavy, soup-like mixture of fruit. It is not much, but it lasts her family until the end of the winter.

Her brother finds a new pastime – hunting down Muggles in Little Hangleton, conjuring their fruit trees to barrenness, sending Burning and Stinging Hexes at women and children in the markets. He grows bolder and bolder until his harmless practical jokes evolve into dark attacks; Merope dutifully deciphers the owl sent from the Ministry of Magic – the arrival of the warning letter sends her father into a fearful rage, as he howls and snarls about Muggle and Mudblood inferiority, but it has the intended effect on her brother. For the rest of the summer and autumn, Merope forgets about her brother's dark cruelty.

Winter comes and goes; there is no snow that year, but there are no animals left to trap and eat. They have all fled the forest in fear. Merope grows thinner and more haggard.

Come summer again, and her Morfin has forgotten the looming threat of the Ministerial warning letter. He plays tricks on the Muggles again; his wand is much better suited to him than Merope's is to her, and he can make them turn on one another like rabid animals and then forget. Morfin gorges himself on their food and fucks their girls; meanwhile, Merope grows thinner still, and her father drunker.

It is in late spring of the year after that – five years since she first and last lay eyes on Tom Riddle – when she sees him again. He is even more handsome than she last remembered him. He rides through the forest with his father and other young, rich men, hunting foxes and rabbits. Sometimes he rides down to the village with a beautiful blonde woman in a shining trap pulled by a proud-standing pony; Merope watches them wistfully, wishing she had the girl's long blonde curls and sparkling blue eyes.

Then, in late summer, a Ministry official comes to arrest her brother and her father. The trial is swift and Merope does not attend; they are sentenced to six months and a year in Azkaban, respectively. When she receives the owl Merope takes all of her father's drink and throws it into a pond.

Her labours from over the long years since then have not gone to waste: under her trundle bed inside a plain pewter cauldron, under an inconspicuous pile of hay, she has in her possession among other things a handful of dried rose thorns, strips of peppermint leaves, a jar of powdered moonstone, and three golden-hued eggs, sitting on a solitary page of parchment. In careful, childish printing, at the top of the page, reads _'AMORTENTIA'._

* * *

IX.

Merope licks her lips, and waits for Tom to say something. Anything. Outside their little house, it begins to rain.

He does not speak for a long moment. A glass of water sits before him on the table, wholly untouched; a comma of cold perspiration curls from its rim as she watches, running down its base. In the half-darkness of twilight, the water looks nearly solid, like ice in a lake that has frozen to cold diamond. His eyes follow the droplet, too; then he looks up, his silvery grey eyes meeting her dull brown.

"A _witch_," he repeats dully. "You're a _witch._ You can do _magic."_

Merope nods uneasily and strokes her belly. The baby is heavy within her.

"You tricked me," he says. His voice is flat and lifeless. "You tricked me into marrying you."

Merope cannot say anything. At last, she has been caught out.

"You – You – I don't know what you did," he said, holding his head in his hands. "I loved you – but I can see it wasn't real now. You _tricked_ me. You tricked me with, with some sort of _witchcraft_ –" he spits the word "– and you made me _marry you_ and now you're carrying the devil's child."

She feels very calm and oddly detached. "You won't leave me," she says with utmost certainty. "What would people say? I'm five months pregnant, Tom. With _our_ child. You're good, and kind, and honourable, and you love me as much as I love you; you wouldn't shame yourself like this. No potion could have faked your love, Tom. No potion can take you away from me."

She is wrong. He takes the keys back to the landlord. Next morning, when she wakes up to the baby nudging her from the inside, his side of the bed is cool and his clothes are gone. There is a letter from the landlord saying that she has one week's notice before she will be evicted.

* * *

X.

"Come on now, love, you can do it, you can do it, my girl, that's it–" The Muggle woman holds onto Merope's frail hands as she wails and convulses, spasms of deep pain wracking her thin frame.

"Fetch Mrs Cole, Jane," the Muggle girl instructs another over her shoulder. "This baby'll be here within the hour."

Merope cries out again, howling out in pain as old as time itself. _Is this how it will be?_ she thinks, pausing to pant raggedly for breath as the child inside her twists and shifts. She wishes she had never seen Tom Riddle. She wishes she had never stumbled on her mother's potion-making books. She wishes she was a Muggle. She wishes she had died in infancy along with her mother.

She lays back in the cot, panting. "You're doing a grand job," the Muggle girl says encouragingly, squeezing her hands gently and smiling at her. It is the first genuine smile Merope has seen in months. "What'll you name the child?"

Merope has no time to reply, because another wave of bone-wrenching, blood-curdling pain explodes from her belly like a summer storm, swamping her body in excruciating echoes of pain. "_Tom!"_ she howls, whether in prayer, curse, or reply to the woman's kind-intentioned question she isn't sure.

And then she can feel her insides expanding, and the woman cries out in surprise and lets go of her hands to reach down inside her. Something catches within her and she feels a great tugging and a ripping, tearing inside herself , like the tearing of old fabric.

An echoing slap, and a baby screams. Merope opens her eyes. He is small, and one shoulder is stained with her blood. She can feel it, starting as a trickle and then furthering into a stronger stream, her blood gushing obscenely within her.

"It's a boy, Missus!" the girl says, carefully wiping him clean and cradling the baby gently. Her false cheer cannot hide the catch of worry in her voice. She only suspects what Merope already knows. "What'll his name be, then?"

As she gazes at her son – her true, flesh-and-blood son that she has brought into this world – she feels something she has never felt before. He has his father's ethereal beauty, even as he howls furiously. She can see his swirling grey eyes and his strong nose and his dark curls. She takes him into her arms and he quietens; she is flooded with warmth, and _love_ so exquisitely sharp and painful, like a shard of glass, pierces her heart.

She feels warm from the crown of her head to the very tips of her fingers – staring down at her son, whose mercurial grey eyes are so much like his father's it aches, she hesitantly brushes her fingers down his crumpled, scarlet face. His skin is warm, and softer than anything she has ever felt before.

A tear lands upon her son's cheek, and he begins fussing again. She hands him back to the orphanage nurse. She can no longer feel the burning blood inside her body, although she notices distantly that the mattress feels distinctly wet.

"Tom," she says to the nurse. She marvels at how distant her voice sounds; how bright everything seems around her; how strange her body feels, as if it no longer belongs to her. "Tom, for his father. Marvolo, for mine. And Riddle. His surname is Riddle. Tom… Marvolo… Riddle."

She closes her eyes. In the distance, her son begins to cry.

* * *

XI.

Warmth. Sunlight streams through the window, dust motes dancing in the air. She tries to reach for one, but misses. She gurgles. Her belly is rumbling, and she begins to whimper her annoyance. A pair of thin, strong arms pick her up gently, and she is cradled against a warm, if thin, body. She reaches up to try to catch a handful of dark hair, but misses.

Blue eyes peer down at her as a spoon is guided into her mouth. She sucks the spoon eagerly, tasting apples. She eats the full bowl, and burps her appreciation. She is bounced up and down, and her nappy is changed. The blue eyes play peek-a-boo with her, and she squeals and laughs as they pop up from behind two hands. The blue eyes crinkle up at the edges.

She drinks from a bottle, and it burns a little on its way down; she fusses and begins to whine, but the drink has its intended effect, and she begins to feel drowsy again. Above her, dust motes dance in the sunlight, and she sleeps.

* * *

_There is no greater glory than to die for love. – Gabriel Garcia Marquez  
_


End file.
